[hudon]

> bearded dude sitting on a cloud

That's a strange straw man. No God-fearing person I know believes in such a thing. God is not a being, but rather is _being itself_. In fact, when Moses asked God what his name was, God replies something like "I am who am". If you prefer an Aristotelian frame, he is the "unmoved mover" [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unmoved_mover

[krapp]

God, as portrayed in the OT, is clearly a being. God has specific thoughts, agency and expresses emotions. God gets tired after making the universe and takes the weekend off. God despairs of humanity and decides to kill everyone in a flood. God calls himself a jealous God. God even argues with Jonah about a houseplant (Jonah 4) and haggles with Ezekiel over what kind of excrement to bake his bread over (Ezekiel 4).

[rcoveson]

The people you know are most like you (the same is true of the people anybody knows), and are a bad proxy for humanity. The number of people who believe their God is "being itself" is vanishingly small compared to the number who believe their God is a real, specific being who has spoken specific words and done specific things.

I agree that "bearded dude sitting on a cloud" is a strawman, but "entity who spoke directly to Adam and Moses" is pretty accurate, in most Christian's eyes.

[deergomoo]

If you search Google Images for “god” there’s an awful lot of bearded men sitting on clouds, so it must be at least a somewhat popular belief

[petre]

Most likely caricatures than popular belief, or caricatures that shape popular belief. Maybe this is why muslims get angry when others make depictions of their prophet?

[today20201014]

God is a being in Genesis. He walks through the Garden.

[joshuacc]

And when someone is in love we say they "walk on clouds." That doesn't mean we're literally ascribing the power of levitation to them.

[today20201014]

> That doesn't mean we're literally ascribing the power of levitation to them.

Exactly, it's figurative language. My point is that when we read in scripture that

> Moses asked God what his name was, God replies something like "I am who am".

the notion of Moses asking God may also be figurative.

[Smoosh]

I always assumed that the "God/Heaven in the clouds" meme came from the same source as Greek gods dwelling atop Mt Olympus being obscured by clouds.

[rbp]

Some Christian commentaries interpret this as God in the person of Jesus Christ: https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/guzik_david/StudyGuide2...

[ur-whale]

> God-fearing

I rest my case.

[hudon]

Ah, you're probably interpreting that as believers walking in fear all day, which again is not the case (side note: studies show that believers are significantly less anxious on a day to day basis. I would link to one study but there are too many that show this so I'll let you Google it).

"God-fearing" is a very ancient phrasing used by the Israelites to refer to anyone that believes in the God as I've described him, "the unmoved mover", "the God of gods", "the Lord of hosts", etc. The term "fear" is our best English translation of the Hebrew text, but the implication here is that we believe that God is just, not arbitrary, and therefore we can respect and submit to his rule and expect fair treatment. Fear only concretely shows up in our hearts when we choose to disobey him. Those who don't believe in his existence or his justice naturally don't have fear when they disobey him, hence the term.

I hope this helps!

[ur-whale]

> Ah, you're probably interpreting that as believers walking in fear all day

No, I was referring to the fact that religious people basically have a slave-like mentality [1][2]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPD1YGghtDk

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eefS0gayKFc

[hudon]

If you think you're not a slave to anything, try just sitting still, not eating or drinking, and seeing if you can truly be free, even free from your own tyrannical desires. Try as you must, you will quickly discover that you are a slave to Thirst. You'll want to spend every waking hour obeying it fully, using every ounce of energy in your body to find water to please Thirst. And if you disobey and don't drink, you will then discover that you are a slave to Fear of Death. You'll be free from Thirst but then completely subjected to Fear of Death, so you'll reorient your whole being to serving Fear and making sure you survive. But let's say you steadfastly desire freedom even from Fear, and if you still don't drink, and then you die, so as to prove a point that you were not even a slave to Fear of Death... we'll know you were a slave to Pride.

And this just strengthens David Foster Wallace's argument: if you're going to be a slave anyway, why not be a slave to the greatest possible thing, Creation itself?

[jwalgenbach]

That is a definition of God that is so amorphous that it is completely useless. God is whatever you want it to be in that particular moment. So much so, that there is nothing concrete there.

You are simply living from moment to moment, with no grounding connecting your beliefs aside from your personal desires for them.

[hudon]

He still has a mind we can relate to, like a child can relate to their parent. If you cared to look into Aquinas’ idea of God you’d find many concrete ideas, but he’s describing the spiritual realm so obviously it’s not as concrete as describing a human person... that’s the whole point.

What’s very concrete is what God has revealed to us historically through his people Israel, and through his son’s incarnation. What the church does is try to take these revelations/projections and through reason map out the source.

[cjameskeller]

A tall mountain, or the ocean, are also "fearsome". The cause of fear here is the power differential, which is not itself a bad thing.